Donald Who?

For the first time in years, it was not about him this week. Some lessons from the opening salvo of the Harris campaign

This past week, it was all about Kamala Harris, who’s taken charge of the Democratic campaign in many of the ways The Ink has been championing — making the case that what’s at stake in the election is freedom, doing it with humor and joy, and, most importantly, telling a story, a real narrative, about how people’s lives will be better when they can choose the future they want.

As Anat Shenker-Osorio has put it to us so many times, Harris is selling the brownie, not the recipe.

She very pointedly took the fight to Trump at the beginning, carving the contrast narrative of a prosecutor versus a felon, a fighter for justice versus a perpetrator of injustice. But then she pivoted and made clear that beating Trump isn't enough. Nor is saving democracy.

It's about, she said, the ability to fight for you, for your family. This is what the Harvard scholar Daniel Ziblatt calls the "bank shot" to save democracy: we have to save democracy and defeat a fascist, but not only for its own sake, but also to have the tools to make your life better tangibly.

People are talking about the Harris campaign’s incredible fundraising successes, the massive organizing calls, the contest to be her vice-presidential pick — it’s all about the Democrats now.

With every significant Democratic leadership voice on board, President Biden looking to his legacy, and Democratic voters energized in a way that, frankly, was hard to imagine even a week ago, there’s real momentum now. Enough to give people hope. Enough to carry through to November.

But the most important thing may be this: No longer is Donald Trump driving the public conversation. In fact, if you’ve been paying attention to pretty much any news outlet, the Republican campaign is mostly playing defense or catchup, for once, struggling to get over vice-presidential pick J.D. Vance’s tall stack of gaffes, or dealing with the torrent of mockery sparked by the recognition that the best way to talk about MAGA is to point out exactly how weird it is, how totally out of step with American life its candidates and advocates are.

The Harris campaign, on offense and telling the better story, points to a way forward. It’s up to voters now to make the decision and choose the future they want — a future that’s about freedom. And do it with a smile on your face — much like Harris’s own.

What follows is some of our observations and insights about this most momentous week, and how to decipher in the nonstop news some real signs of change afoot.

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It’s finally not all about him

Following the Butler, Pennsylvania, campaign rally shooting and going into the Republican convention (and the Democrats’ willingness to pause campaigning in a misguided bid for unity), it seemed like Donald Trump had a lock on the national conversation. As we said then, exceptionalizing that event only fed the fires.

It is possible to believe that shooting leaders we don’t like is absolutely, incontrovertibly out of bounds and — and — that this event has a history and a context. It didn’t just fall out of a coconut tree. It is possible to wish a man a speedy recovery and to insist on the urgency of doing every peaceful thing humanly possible to prevent him from driving the country even further down this road to where what happened to him — even though it never should have — becomes unexceptional.

But a week into the Harris campaign, it finally looks like those fires have been doused. Harris is who everyone’s talking about, and she’s remade the national discussion about the Democratic path forward — not about the Republican path backward.